Neal Falls was shot by a woman he tried to rape and strangle in Charleston, West Virginia.
Photograph: Charleston Police Department

When a woman in Charleston, West Virginia, opened her front door to greet a stranger she had arranged to meet through an escort ad she had placed with Backpage.com, she knew instantly she was in mortal danger. The man said just three words – “Live or die” – then held a gun to her stomach.

That was the start of 10 minutes of unadulterated horror. The man grabbed the woman by the throat and dragged her around the house, until in a rush of pure adrenaline and an effort for self-preservation, she snatched up his gun and shot once, killing him.

From there the story of the woman’s encounter with a violent attacker gets stranger still. When homicide detectives from the Charleston police department began combing over the site on the day of the attack, 18 July, they were amazed by what they found.

The slain attacker, Neal Falls, appeared at first sight to be unexceptional – a 45-year-old former security guard from Springfield, Oregon, who had no serious criminal record and only a few minor traffic infractions to his name. But then, investigators were puzzled to find that he had no money on him. Why would a man visit an escort for an appointment with no money on him?

The trunk of Falls’ Subaru Forester car provided plenty of grisly clues to his intentions. It included an array of handcuffs, two axes, a machete, a bullet-proof vest and – the most disturbing items – a shovel and a bottle of bleach.

Police now believe that the woman, who has not been named to spare further trauma, not only saved her own life but may have prevented the deaths of countless other women in future. They are actively investigating the possibility that Falls could have been a serial killer who operated across several states.

The search has now taken in Chillicothe, Ohio, a small town of about 20,000 people where at least six women have disappeared, four later turning up dead, in the past couple of months. According to the Huffington Post, the investigation has also expanded to Nevada, where detectives are comparing Falls’ DNA to materials found at the scene of the murder and dismemberment of several prostitutes up to a decade ago.

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The chief of Charleston detectives, Steve Cooper, told the Charleston Gazette-Mail his department had enlisted the help of the FBI.

“They are assisting us in submitting this case into a national database that goes to most law enforcement agencies throughout the country,” he said.

The drama of what happened when Falls entered the Charleston house was captured on an emergency call made just after the shooting.

“There’s a lady in the alley here saying that some guy tried to rape her and she had to defend herself and she shot him and he’s in the kitchen,” a neighbour told the 911 dispatcher.

The victim told the Gazette-Mail immediately after the attack that Falls had tried to suffocate her.

“I was telling him to please just let me breathe, but he wouldn’t,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m going to call the shots and you’re going to be quiet.”

As he was dragging her through the kitchen, she grabbed a rake and prepared to hit him with it. To stop her, he put his gun down, and she pounced.

“I grabbed the gun and just shot it behind me,” she said. “It hit him.”

The woman said that she had been preparing a long time for that split second where she saved her own life and possibly stopped a serial killer.

“I fought men my whole life,” she said. “I guess I had to be ready for that guy.”